Audio when converting LP's

[Mets17 0]

Hi,

 

New to EMC, and had what is probably an easy configuration problem to solve.

 

I have an ION USB turntable, and am using it with EMC 9 to convert some of my old LP's to MP3's. The recording process works flawlessly, as the meters are moving (so I can see I am getting input), and when the recording is complete, the MP3's play back fine.

 

The problem is that I am not getting any audio out of my speakers *during* the recording process, so I can't hear when a song ends, or when it actually starts. I have to eyeball it, which is a pita.

 

In the control panel under sounds and audio devices, my PC sound card is selected as the playback device, and the USB CODEC (for the turntable) is selected as the recording device. I've checked the volume levels for both, and both are set to half way.

 

As I said, I am sure I am missing something simple. Anyone have a suggestion?

 

Thx,

 

Ron

[d_deweywright 118]

Hi,

 

New to EMC, and had what is probably an easy configuration problem to solve.

 

I have an ION USB turntable, and am using it with EMC 9 to convert some of my old LP's to MP3's. The recording process works flawlessly, as the meters are moving (so I can see I am getting input), and when the recording is complete, the MP3's play back fine.

 

The problem is that I am not getting any audio out of my speakers *during* the recording process, so I can't hear when a song ends, or when it actually starts. I have to eyeball it, which is a pita.

 

In the control panel under sounds and audio devices, my PC sound card is selected as the playback device, and the USB CODEC (for the turntable) is selected as the recording device. I've checked the volume levels for both, and both are set to half way.

 

As I said, I am sure I am missing something simple. Anyone have a suggestion?

 

Thx,

 

Ron

You'll have to check to see if there's any software that came with your turntable to do this. Basically, the connection between the USB port and the sound card is missing, and it'll require a driver from the turntable manufacturer that can create a "port" to the sound card to playback the sound during recording. Hopefully you can find something on a CD that came with the turntable, or from the manufacturer's web-site.

 

Let us know how you make out.

Edited June 25, 2007 by d_deweywright

[Mets17 0]

You'll have to check to see if there's any software that came with your turntable to do this. Basically, the connection between the USB port and the sound card is missing, and it'll require a driver from the turntable manufacturer that can create a "port" to the sound card to playback the sound during recording. Hopefully you can find something on a CD that came with the turntable, or from the manufacturer's web-site.

 

Let us know how you make out.

 

It did come with software, but it didn't appear to be drivers. It was actually a disk for a software applicaiton called "Audacity", which is a shareware program (available at SourceForge) in the same mode as EMC, only it provides one function: converting LP's to MP3's. The problem is that this software is awful, so I really don't want to install it.

 

Anyway, I'll check with ION to see what they say as well, but I'm pretty sure that Audacity disk is the only one that came with the turntable.

 

Thx,

 

Ron

[gi7omy 2]

Audacity if memory serves is actually Open Source (Linux) software and is a prerequisite for some of the Linux sound programs so it could be needed for the capture

[d_deweywright 118]

Audacity if memory serves is actually Open Source (Linux) software and is a prerequisite for some of the Linux sound programs so it could be needed for the capture

Apparently he can capture okay... it's just that there's nothing converting and sending the incoming signal on the USB port over to the sound card to play it back. My ADS Instant Audio USB capture device has the same problem, but since I'm starting with an analog signal, I can split it and send it through my sound card, as well as the ADS Tech device. If I use the recording software that came with the Instant Audio device, it does route the sound back through the sound card, but I didn't like that software either.

[Mets17 0]

Apparently he can capture okay... it's just that there's nothing converting and sending the incoming signal on the USB port over to the sound card to play it back. My ADS Instant Audio USB capture device has the same problem, but since I'm starting with an analog signal, I can split it and send it through my sound card, as well as the ADS Tech device. If I use the recording software that came with the Instant Audio device, it does route the sound back through the sound card, but I didn't like that software either.

 

Yep, capture works fine. I see the input meters moving when I click record, and once the recording is complete and I playback the MP3 I created, it also plays fine. The only issue is with the audio during recording.

 

FWIW, I checked with ION, and they weren't overly helpful. Basically, because the turntable is a class compliant USB audio device, it uses the generic driver software that is built into the OS (in this case, XP Professional). Once I connected the turntable to the PC with the USB cable, the PC recognized it as an audio input device titled "USB Audio Codec". According to ION, there are no other drivers needed.

 

The interesting thing is that within the Audacity application, there is a function called "monitor input", which if selected, allows you to listen to the LP as you are recording it. I didn't see anything like that within EMC, so I'm kind of stuck here.

 

If anyone else has any bright ideas, I would appreciate it.

 

Thx,

 

Ron

[tbrewst 19]

Pretty much listen to what Dave is telling you as he just knows as much as anyone here about this kind of stuff.The only thing I would try and say is depending on your sound card you may be able to turn on a funtion with it that might let you hear it.I have an Audigy 2 and I know if I set my input to "What you hear" I can pretty much hear anything I'm capturing.I don't have a USB device to try it with so I can't say for sure.

[Mets17 0]

Pretty much listen to what Dave is telling you as he just knows as much as anyone here about this kind of stuff.The only thing I would try and say is depending on your sound card you may be able to turn on a funtion with it that might let you hear it.I have an Audigy 2 and I know if I set my input to "What you hear" I can pretty much hear anything I'm capturing.I don't have a USB device to try it with so I can't say for sure.

 

Certainly, and I appreciate the help. There just aren't any other drivers that came with the turntable, which is leading me to believe that I don't have something set correctly in Windows. I have checked the soundcard, and there doesn't appear to be any setting I can change.

 

The only thing that seemed odd to me was within EMC, while the recording device was listed as the USB Codec (the turntable), the input is listed is "microphone", and there is no other option in the dropdown. That is, I can't select anything else. Now, it may just select microphone as the generic human interface device, but it still seemed odd.

[gi7omy 2]

Check your volume control in the task bar - open that and go to options, properties and make sure that Line In, etc are selected so that the slider controls show on the bar

 

[d_deweywright 118]

Check your volume control in the task bar - open that and go to options, properties and make sure that Line In, etc are selected so that the slider controls show on the bar

Unfortunately, and I've talked to other people about this, most USB audio input devices don't have a volume control for the recording level. That is, for my ADS Tech Instant Audio USB device, as the OP said, it lists itself as a 'microphone' input, but there is no way to control the incoming volume, and this has been verified by the maker of the unit. Other people with other devices report the same thing. The only way to control the volume then, is to have some sort of preamp type unit to control the audio signal going into the USB device, which I have done.

 

In the case of the original poster's turntable, putting a separate preamp in place is probably not an option as it sounds like it's a USB line directly from the turntable, so, my only hope would be that there is a volume control knob on the turntable itself to control the volume going to the USB device, and thus to the PC.

[TerryS 0]

Hmmm, what happened to the reply I posted last night? It was there and now it is gone.

 

Well, I to have been looking for the same solution, different software. I have talked to the creators of the software and they have gioen me some things to try to no avail. I have searched the Internet for hours. No luck. Then it occurred to me to try running the software that comes with the turntable - Audacity - to monitor the records while using other software to do the recording, and it works! And when I use the recording software to playback what I have recorded, I don't have to stop the Audacity software.

 

So the Audacity software can connect the Audio In to the Audio Out and not "Steal" the Audio In from the recording software. And still get out of the way when the recording software wants to do the playback.

 

Of course I don't know that this will work with EMC, but give it a try, and good luck. Let us know what happens.

[d_deweywright 118]

Hmmm, what happened to the reply I posted last night? It was there and now it is gone.

 

Well, I to have been looking for the same solution, different software. I have talked to the creators of the software and they have gioen me some things to try to no avail. I have searched the Internet for hours. No luck. Then it occurred to me to try running the software that comes with the turntable - Audacity - to monitor the records while using other software to do the recording, and it works! And when I use the recording software to playback what I have recorded, I don't have to stop the Audacity software.

 

So the Audacity software can connect the Audio In to the Audio Out and not "Steal" the Audio In from the recording software. And still get out of the way when the recording software wants to do the playback.

 

Of course I don't know that this will work with EMC, but give it a try, and good luck. Let us know what happens.

Right... but can it control the incoming recording volume so you can control clipping?

[TerryS 0]

Right... but can it control the incoming recording volume so you can control clipping?

The ION USB Turntable has a pot on it to control the output level.

[d_deweywright 118]

The ION USB Turntable has a pot on it to control the output level.

Ah... good. So then, using the Audacity software, the solution exists to record and hear what you're recording at the same time.

 

Once that's done, you can bring the saved .WAV file into Sound Editor and do whatever post-processing you want, cleaning, etc. prior to writing to CD.

[TerryS 0]

Ah... good. So then, using the Audacity software, the solution exists to record and hear what you're recording at the same time.

 

Once that's done, you can bring the saved .WAV file into Sound Editor and do whatever post-processing you want, cleaning, etc. prior to writing to CD.

Yes, and more. I wanted to use different recording software for its ability to record an entire side of a record and AUTOMATICALLY break it into a wave file for each song, something Audacity cannot do. But that software was not able to monitor the sound as it was doing the recording. Now I fire up Audacity and run it just to monitor the sound and run my other software to do the recording. The software I am using will also automatically do all the post processing on each .wav file. And as I said earlier, I can play back the individual .wav files from my recording software without having to shut off Audacity.

[Mhurdle127 0]

Since this thread seems to touch on some of my issues, I will post my issue here as well as on a separate thread. I have spent almost an entire week trying to set up to record my LP's from a Technics Turntable to my Windows 7 SP1 laptop and burn to CD's. I have the ADS Tech Instant Music RDX-150 unit which switches from RCA input to USB output and a pre-amp between the ADS Tech box and my turntable. I originally had Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 on my PC and it apparently will not run on Windows 7, so I spent over $60 to download Roxio Creator 2011 and had all sorts of issues getting that installed, but that's a different story. My problem now is I can't seem to figure out how to configure the USB Audio Device to work properly so I can set the levels before recording, and whatever recording I try to do comes out awful (much worse than when I was using EMC 9). I am at my wit's end on this thing as I had planned to spend my vacation week happily recording vinyl to CD and I have yet to do so after a week. The Roxio product just doesn't seem to play with the ADS Tech equipment. HELP!!!

[sknis 220]

Since this thread seems to touch on some of my issues, I will post my issue here as well as on a separate thread. I have spent almost an entire week trying to set up to record my LP's from a Technics Turntable to my Windows 7 SP1 laptop and burn to CD's. I have the ADS Tech Instant Music RDX-150 unit which switches from RCA input to USB output and a pre-amp between the ADS Tech box and my turntable. I originally had Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 on my PC and it apparently will not run on Windows 7, so I spent over $60 to download Roxio Creator 2011 and had all sorts of issues getting that installed, but that's a different story. My problem now is I can't seem to figure out how to configure the USB Audio Device to work properly so I can set the levels before recording, and whatever recording I try to do comes out awful (much worse than when I was using EMC 9). I am at my wit's end on this thing as I had planned to spend my vacation week happily recording vinyl to CD and I have yet to do so after a week. The Roxio product just doesn't seem to play with the ADS Tech equipment. HELP!!!

 

No need to double post; we will see and anwer in the other one to prevent confusion.